Read The Section On Integrating Sources From CEL Ch 16 ✓ Solved
Read the Section On Integrating Sources From CEL Ch 16 467 4
Read the Section On Integrating Sources From CEL Ch 16 467 477 A. Assignment: Answer each of the questions below in several sentences. Collect your responses together and submit them to this assignment.
Refer to this passage from Terese Marie Mailhot's essay, "A Woman, Tree or Not" (Longreads.com) to answer the questions below: "I know that the rhetoric of lost culture is a white imposition. Governments have implemented policy to categorically destroy us — how we owned land, or received an education, or were treated with health care. The Indian Act is still the only policy in place put upon a race of people in the entire world. And we aren’t a race — we’re categorized as one, but we’re sovereign people who are self-identified and thousands of years old. We were here before borders and it’s why I work and live in the United States, under the Jay Treaty, which states any Native born in Canada can travel freely between the US and Canada."
Questions: How would you categorize the following attempt to integrate Mailhot's passage into this writer's work? Is it a paraphrase, summary, or quotation? Why? "Some scholars and writers have noted the demand on Native peoples to provide accurate information about themselves for the purposes of categorizing and cataloging their differences from other groups. These scholars defy what Terese Marie Mailhot describes as a policy of making Native peoples feel lost and disconnected." Is the passage above accurate in its characterization of Mailhot's ideas? Why or why not? What makes the coherence of the following attempt to integrate Mailhot's passage difficult to understand? How would you revise this passage to make it more coherent? (see CEL Ch. 16 p. for more information) "The writer of the essay 'Tree or Not' discusses race. ' We're sovereign people who are self-identified and thousands of years old .' This is why she does not feel lost."
Paper For Above Instructions
Introduction and framing. Integrating sources—whether by quotation, paraphrase, or summary—requires careful attention to attribution, fidelity to the original argument, and seamless fit within your own prose. In the context of the Mailhot passage, the task is to determine how the sample integration functions rhetorically, whether it preserves meaning, and how coherence can be improved (Booth, Colomb, & Williams, 2008; Graff & Birkenstein, 2016). When you work with Indigenous texts such as Mailhot, you should also consider ethical representation and context, ensuring that the author’s voice and intent are not misrepresented or reduced to a single quote or slogan (Mailhot, Longreads).
Answer to Question 1: Categorization of the sample integration. The given sentence—“Some scholars and writers have noted the demand on Native peoples to provide accurate information about themselves for the purposes of categorizing and cataloging their differences from other groups. These scholars defy what Terese Marie Mailhot describes as a policy of making Native peoples feel lost and disconnected.”—reads as a paraphrase rather than a direct quotation. It does not reproduce Mailhot’s exact wording or distinctive phrasing, and it reframes her ideas through a generalizing lens, attributing them to unnamed scholars rather than to Mailhot herself (Booth et al., 2008). The signal words (“Some scholars and writers have noted”) introduce others’ voices and potentially diminish Mailhot’s agency by not anchoring the claim in Mailhot’s own argument (Graff & Birkenstein, 2016). A paraphrase should still preserve the specificity of the source’s claim while making a clear connection to Mailhot’s argument, which this example fails to do because it shifts emphasis away from Mailhot’s articulation of a policy and its effects (Purdue OWL, n.d.).
Answer to Question 1, continued: The passage is not a quotation; it does not include Mailhot’s distinctive diction or exact phrases. It may be read as an interpretive reformulation, but it risks misrepresenting the source’s emphasis by focusing on scholars rather than on Mailhot’s own rhetoric about policy, sovereignty, and cultural loss (UNC Writing Center, n.d.). For these reasons, it is best described as a paraphrase that requires careful alignment with Mailhot’s core claims and clearer signaling that the idea is Mailhot’s, not the general claim of “some scholars.” (APA, 2020; MLA, 2021).
The accuracy of the characterization (Question 2) requires comparing the paraphrase to Mailhot’s actual assertions. Mailhot argues that “the rhetoric of lost culture is a white imposition” and that governmental policies—such as the Indian Act—attempt to destroy Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, framing Indigenous identity as static or “a race” to be categorized. The paraphrase provided here shifts emphasis, suggesting that scholars oppose Mailhot’s portrayal of policy rather than echoing it, which can distort the original claim. If a paraphrase is to be faithful, it should preserve Mailhot’s specific critique—policy as a force that constructs racialized categories and erodes sovereignty—without diluting or reframing it as a general scholarly concern (Harvard Writing Center, n.d.; Purdue OWL, n.d.).
Answer to Question 2, continued: To evaluate accuracy, consider whether the paraphrase preserves Mailhot’s critique that law and policy serve to codify Native identities in ways that systematize “loss” or disconnection. The paraphrase’s phrase “to provide accurate information about themselves for the purposes of categorizing and cataloging their differences” captures a related idea but misses Mailhot’s emphasis on sovereignty and self-definition. A more accurate paraphrase would foreground Mailhot’s claim about sovereignty, and would explicitly link policy to the erasure of self-determination, e.g., “Mailhot argues that policy constructs Native identities to erase sovereignty and to frame us as a ‘lost culture’ under a Eurocentric order” (Mailhot, Longreads).
Answer to Question 3: Coherence issues in the third passage. The example—“The writer of the essay 'Tree or Not' discusses race. ' We're sovereign people who are self-identified and thousands of years old .' This is why she does not feel lost.”—exhibits several coherence problems: fragmentation, mispunctuation, and abrupt shifts between paraphrase and direct quotation. The sentence fragment “' We're sovereign people who are self-identified and thousands of years old .'” lacks grammatical integration, and the phrase “This is why she does not feel lost” assumes a causal link without sufficient contextual grounding. The quotation marks are inconsistently placed, and the switch from third-person description to a direct claim about the author’s feelings is abrupt, weakening argumentative continuity (CH 16 notes; Purdue OWL; UNC Writing Center).
Proposed revision. A more coherent integration would tether Mailhot’s claim to the writer’s analysis with a clear signal and glue text that preserves meaning while maintaining syntactic cohesion. For example: “In her essay, Mailhot argues that the rhetoric of lost culture is a white imposition, and that colonial policy has systematically destroyed Indigenous sovereignty (Mailhot, Longreads). The writer of the piece then uses this idea to frame race as a question of sovereignty rather than mere difference, suggesting that Indigenous people are not ‘lost’ but self-identified and historically grounded.” This revision preserves Mailhot’s core claim, clearly attributes it, and links it to the writer’s argument in a cohesive way (APA, 2020; Booth et al., 2008).
Discussion of best practices. To improve coherence and fidelity when integrating sources, use signal phrases that attribute ideas to the original author, maintain textual integrity by retaining the author’s essential terms, and choose the integration form (quotation, paraphrase, or summary) that best preserves nuance. Paraphrase when you need to preserve the core argument while changing wording for your own sentence structure; quote briefly when the exact language is crucial to the point; summarize when you need to condense the overall argument. Signal the type of engagement and provide page or section references when available (Purdue OWL; MLA Handbook; Chicago Manual of Style). These practices help maintain accuracy, avoid misrepresentation, and support coherent argumentation (Graff & Birkenstein, 2016; Booth et al., 2008; The Chicago Manual of Style, 2017).
Conclusion. The process of integrating sources, especially with Indigenous texts that hinge on sovereignty and self-definition, requires careful attention to fidelity and context. By distinguishing paraphrase from summary and quotation, checking accuracy against the source, and revising for coherence, writers can incorporate external perspectives in ways that enrich their own arguments without distorting the original voices (Mailhot, Longreads; Purdue OWL, n.d.; UNC Writing Center, n.d.).
References
- Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., & Williams, J. M. (2008). The Craft of Research. University of Chicago Press.
- Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2016). They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (3rd ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.
- Purdue Online Writing Lab. (n.d.). Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing. https://owl.purdue.edu/
- UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center. (n.d.). Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/
- Harvard College Writing Center. (n.d.). Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing. https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/
- UC Berkeley Writing Center. (n.d.). Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing. https://writingcenter.berkeley.edu/
- The Modern Language Association. (2021). MLA Handbook (9th ed.). The Modern Language Association.
- American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). American Psychological Association.
- Mailhot, Terese Marie. (n.d.). A Woman, Tree or Not. Longreads. https://longreads.com/stories/a-woman-tree-or-not
- The Chicago Manual of Style. (2017). The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.). University of Chicago Press.